Let me first talk about my own experience, by the way, I want to give people who want to enter the automation industry a little confidence.
I graduated in 14 years, and I am not a mechanical major at all, yes, I am a non-major, hahaha. But I like this industry very much. The university just went to the chemistry major that I disliked the most just because I obeyed the adjustment.
Later, I really didn’t want to do it in a chemical plant, so I learned 3D software and CAD by myself. After I had a certain foundation, I started looking for a job. The salary is not required. Started to help others to produce drawings, and later slowly started to design simple equipment, and then later responsible for the design of the entire production line, which was considered to have entered the threshold of automated machinery design.
Therefore, if you want to enter the automation industry, whether it is mechanical or electrical, I think you can try it. After all, I can study chemistry like this. What are you worried about?
Everyone knows that manufacturing is the foundation to support a country ’s prosperity. Many industries must have strong support for manufacturing, such as aero engines. Although our country is the only country with all industrial categories, many, even most The categories are very weak.
01
Let’s talk about the current development advantages of automation
The so-called automation (Automation) refers to the process of hardware, equipment and other hardware in the absence of people or few people, according to the wishes of people, through automatic monitoring, data information processing, event judgment, logical control, to achieve the set goal.
At present, whether it is industrial automation intelligent manufacturing or the current big fire AI, it can be said to slowly replace the direction of human development, and industrial automation and AI will definitely be interlinked in the near future, because this is the general direction of human development. Now that 5G is slowly developing, it will only make this process faster and faster.
Let ’s continue to talk about automation. The current automation is widely used in many aspects of society, including industry, agriculture, chemical industry, and life. For example, the automated production and packaging of dumplings, etc. Application automation can not only reduce labor and increase work efficiency, It can also reduce the risk of human work to a certain extent.
With the rapid development of society, the demographic dividend has long passed, and labor costs have become the highest cost output of an enterprise. When communicating with customers in the past, many people will basically say that the wages of workers are getting higher and higher. In addition, sometimes leave is not good, and if something goes wrong, the overall cost will be very high if something goes wrong, so more and more companies are seeking to replace manual automation, which brings a lot to the development of automation Opportunities.
02
Let’s talk about the current problems in the automation industry
1. Vicious competition
At present, China’s development in automation is not benign, that is, vicious competition, what does it mean?
We all know that under normal circumstances, the higher the price of the product, the better the quality will be, but for customers, they will give priority to the price and try to shorten the company’s expenses, and the current competition in the automation industry is more competitive Large, a project may compete with several automation companies. Of these companies, there will always be a few that get the project at a low price.
Thus,
For the automation company that got the project, if the price is too low, the profit will be very low, and in order to survive, the enterprise can only reduce the quality of the equipment
For customers, the purpose of purchasing automation equipment is to reduce labor and increase production efficiency, but because of quality problems, equipment often has problems. Over time, customers will also be disappointed with automation equipment.
It is precisely because of this vicious competition that not only makes many manufacturing companies skeptical about automation, but also makes many automation companies gradually shut down because of low profits.
Only high profits can bring about benign development . They say that foreign equipment is good, but they all know that their prices are also high, but can the actual production cost be so high? Certainly not. The extra is their profits. With profits, companies can invest more in R & D and pay more attention to product quality.
2. Unhealthy payment methods
Now in the automation industry, the payment method is 3,3,3,1, what does it mean?
3: After the contract is signed, before the project starts, the customer prepays 30%;
3: When the automation equipment is completed and the equipment is transported to the customer’s site, the customer pays 30%;
3: After the commissioning of the automation equipment at the customer’s site is completed, and after passing the customer’s pre-acceptance, the customer pays 30%;
1: From the acceptance date, a one-year warranty period, during which there is a problem with the equipment, the automation enterprise needs free maintenance, after the warranty period ends, the customer pays 10%
This is the entire process of an automation project. Of course, each company will be different, but at present, for most companies, this is the case. If it is a well-known company in the industry, the customer may be required to ship before shipment. Payment to 90%.
For an automation project, the gross profit is generally 30% of the total project sales, and the last 10% is to be removed. First, it can only be obtained after one year of acceptance. Secondly, all those who do automation know whether they can get all It’s another matter. In this way, the gross profit is only 20%.
So for automation projects, for customers, the money cannot be received at one time; for suppliers, they need to pay the full amount before they can be shipped. In this way, if an enterprise is working on many projects at the same time, and the project cycle is relatively long , It is likely to cause a break in the capital chain.
But things are not absolute. As mentioned earlier, well-known companies will require customers to pay 90% of the purchase price at one time. Why are they so stiff? Because they have their own strength, their own technology, and their own product quality assurance, since we cannot change the general environment, we can change the status quo by making our products better.
Of course, each industry has its inherent shortcomings. We see its shortcomings because we still love it (have a thick skin), so everyone has other things that I have n’t mentioned, and can also be in the comments supplement.
03
Having said so much frustration, now talk about the benefits of this industry for our automation practitioners
1. Have a sense of accomplishment
I still remember the joy and accomplishment after I made the first device I designed, just like looking at my son, haha
I have completely forgotten the difficulties of staying up late to change the picture. I believe that many people who do automation, whether it is mechanical or electrical, will have this feeling. This is the sense of achievement that automation brings to us, which is also his charm. .
2. Not afraid of finding a job
Now knowing that, many people are dissuading the machinery industry and the automation industry. The reason is nothing but low wages and hard work. I have read the answers of many people. In the current situation, I just want to do my own job well. If so, even if you are in an Internet company, you only do code checking every day. I do n’t think the salary is too high, right? So, it’s not the industry that doesn’t work, but the people who don’t.
3. Can master a lot of knowledge
Automation involves many disciplines, whether it is mechanical or electrical, automation involves motors, mechanisms, analog electrical, digital, single-chip, programming, algorithms, control theory, finite element analysis, etc., from traditional industrial control to PLC, from ordinary servo The application to CNC machine tools, from robots to artificial intelligence, from embedded operating systems to dedicated systems, involves too many fields, and in this large field, no matter what direction we develop in, it is not a deviation. This is the advantage of automation. So, as long as you want to work hard, you can become a bull in any direction!